


Loki and the Dwarves

by Norickayer



Series: The Saga of Loki: Hero of Earth-616 [2]
Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Genderqueer Character, Heart-to-Heart, Identity Porn, Loki does what ze wants, Loki is sometimes a girl and never ever a guy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 04:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2414387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Norickayer/pseuds/Norickayer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stranger bearing resemblance to Thor’s dead brother shows up on top of Avengers tower.</p><p>OR</p><p>After a bit of short-sighted mischief, Loki must trick a master craftsman to get the prize.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loki and the Dwarves

**Author's Note:**

> _Loki Visits the Dwarves_ is a reference to _Skáldskaparmál_ , in which Loki shaves off Sif’s hair as a prank, and is made to pay reparations by going to the Dwarves and having them make her a wig of gold as a replacement. Loki manages to trick them out of charging a fee, but Thor sews Loki’s lips shut in punishment. (Look back at the end of Lokka Tattur. What’s the last thing America says to Loki?) See [Loki-in-myth](http://loki-in-myth.tumblr.com/post/26848102069/taking-sifs-hair-giving-mjolnir-and-other-gifts-to)’s take on the tale.
> 
> This retelling takes the original story elements and remixes them with Marvel canon: _After a bit of short-sighted mischief, Loki must trick a master craftsman to get the prize._
> 
> Warning: some accidental misgendering of Loki.

Miraculously, the Avengers survived SHIELD’s fall. Fury took off to chase HYRDA through parts unknown, Maria Hill moved to D.C, and Natasha Romanova quietly disappeared.

Except for the part where she and Steve are actually just hiding out at Tony’s place.

“I’ve got another lead on Bucky,” Steve announces as he enters the room. Natasha considers whether rolling her eyes is appropriate in this situation, and gives in to the urge. 

“It’s been two months, Steve. Whatever Sam’s friend’s coworker’s daughter saw, it was probably just another homeless person.” Just like the last five leads: scruffy, unshaven veterans who were the right height and coloring, but nonetheless not Bucky. The Winter Soldier had espionage training that rivaled the Black Widow’s. If he didn’t want to be found, he probably wouldn’t.

Natasha feels her cellphone begin to vibrate a split-second before the ringer kicks in. “Avengers –Assemble!” chimes from Natasha’s boot and the pocket of Steve’s pants. Somehow, Tony has made this particular alarm sound remarkably like Michael Buffer saying “Let’s get ready to rumble!”

“I deleted that ringtone seven times,” Steve complains, sounding defeated.

Instead of actually speaking into the phone like a normal person, Tony then broadcasts his voice over JARVIS’s intercom system.

“I don’t mean to alarm you but there’s some guy in gold horns up on the roof.”

“I guess it was too much to hope for that Loki would stay dead,” Natasha mutters as she and Steve rush to the floor’s common room. Tony is already there, wearing his repulsors on his hands but no other parts of his Iron Man suit.

“This is a trap, right?” Steve asks. Tony shrugs.

“JARVIS, can we get a visual?” The AI obediently summons a holographic model of the roof of Stark Tower, where almost a year ago Loki set up a portal to allow the Chitauri to invade New York.

There’s a teenager hanging out there. The stranger does bear a resemblance to Loki- dark hair, similar bone structure, and of course the weird metal-and-leather costume. But the lines of the clothing are different, the horns perched on his forehead are much smaller. Plus, you know, this kid might not even be old enough to drink, let alone lead a world-conquering alien army.

“Have you contacted Thor?” Natasha asks.

“It’s not Loki,” Steve observes, “Some other Asgardian? A relative?”

“Yeah I shot off a text to Dr. Foster’s assistant as soon as we spotted the fanboy here,” Tony mentions, gesturing at the image.

Thor owns a Starkphone, but he doesn’t actually use it much. Dr. Foster has a similar ability to completely tune out her phone when she’s distracted- which is pretty much all the time. If anyone wants to contact either of them, they have to go through Darcy, Jane’s intern. It’s an inefficient system, but it’s the only thing that works.

“He’s just- what, admiring the sights?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, all he’s done is wander around and stare off at the skyline. He’s pretty boring,” Tony notes.

“He’s waiting for us to confront him.”

“Mm, yeah that’s not happening,” Tony decides. “JARVIS, invite Bambi down.”

“You’re letting him into the tower?”

“Well I’m not ignoring him and I’m not meeting him on his terms, so…”

“Right.”

-

The skyline on Earth-19999 is different than the New York Loki is used to. New York has gone through a lot of renovations and rebuilding over the years due to frequent supervillain attacks and alien invasions, so it shouldn’t be surprising. The Baxter Building isn’t where it should be, though, and Loki expected that to be relatively stable across dimensions. How different would Earth-616 be if there were no Fantastic Four? Loki wonders.

It’s just past sundown, but the roof of Avengers Tower is lit well.

Lights…

Loki paces along the ledge a bit longer, making sure to stop in suitably dramatic poses. There are security cameras watching, after all, to say nothing of the CrowCam.

Camera…

There is a sound like someone clearing their throat, although the speaker doesn’t actually have one.

“Excuse me, sir. Mr. Stark requests your presence downstairs.” The artificial voice has a slight upper-class British accent, the kind Americans associate with class and old money.

A line of lights helpfully illuminates the door leading down into the tower.

“Nice of him,” Loki answers. Maybe ze won’t be thrown off the roof tonight, after all.

Action!

-

The kid definitely doesn’t look old enough to drink. Tony got supernaturally good at gauging ages back when he was a ‘billionaire playboy philanthropist’ instead of a ‘billionaire _superhero_ philanthropist’, for obvious moral and legal reasons. The intruder from the roof would have trouble being served at most of the bars Tony frequents. He’s clearly on the cusp of adulthood, but he still looks young enough that Tony wants to call Pepper and have her send the kid home in a taxi.

Also, for some reason, he has a crow following him. It struggles to keep up inside the tower, and ends up hopping after its charge.

“So let’s cut the bullshit,” Tony Stark says in greeting, “who the hell are you and what were you doing on my tower?”

The kid holds his hands up in the universal sign for ‘I’m unarmed.’

“I will tell you who I am so long as I can be assured your second thoughts will come _before_ you shoot, and not after.”

This has got to be good.

“We’re not going to shoot a minor without provocation,” Steve says, as much a reminder to his teammates as a reassurance to the stranger.

“Yeah, we hardly ever manage to kill trespassers,” Tony adds.

The adolescent has a good poker face, but he flinches visibly when Natasha steps into view. His pupils narrow, and a single tremor shakes his hands before he can reign it in.

There’s something there. Something they can use.

Natasha smiles, a predatory gleam in her eyes.

The large black bird that followed the kid from the roof hops around, fluttering its wings in a bid for attention.

“Narfi! Narfi are you ok?” the bird asks worriedly.

The stranger blinks, but accepts the opening without hesitation.

“I am Narfi Lokison, and your tower has a great view.” Well, that explains the resemblance and the reluctance to introduce himself.

“Loki’s kid came to visit with a robot bird?” Steve’s got his Captain face on, suspicious but willing to negotiate.

“Your speaker needs work,” Tony complains, because he is physically incapable of ignoring shoddy workmanship.

‘Narfi’ shrugs, as if tinny speakers and his own motives are equally ineffable.

“Did your father send you?” Natasha asks. She carefully watches Narfi’s face, and catches the wince at the word ‘father’.

“Nope,” Narfi chirps, “I’ve only seen the man who invaded New York once, and we didn’t exactly have time to chat.”

“Then what are you doing here instead of Asgard?”

“I’m not Asgardian,” Narfi says, “I’m from New York.” He has an amused, almost mocking tone that reminds Tony of both Loki and himself. Tony would bet money that everything the kid just said is true, if only on technicality.

“So, what- Loki comes down to Earth a decade ago and has a fling with some human?”

Tony flexes his fingers inside the repulsor gloves.

“My mother is not just ‘some human’,” Narfi responds.

“And this isn’t some kid’s garage project,” Tony says, motioning to the robot bird. “Your speakers sound like they came out of a cereal box but the flapping replicates an organic bird. What the hell did you do, graft a phone to a living crow?”

Serial killers often start as children by mutilating animals. Steve read an article about that just weeks ago, and the highlights run through his mind as he waits for Narfi to respond.

“Oh, this is a CrowCam, I made it with my boyfriend Billy. Say hi, Billy,” Narfi commands.

The bird opens its beak and a human voice replies “Narfi, stop fucking around.”

“It’s magic,” Narfi confides, falsely modest.

Steve glances significantly at Natasha. She ignores him.

“I bet I could Clarke’s law its ass if I got a good look at its guts,” Tony says. He takes a step toward Narfi and offers her a hand. “Hi, I’m Tony Stark.”

Narfi reaches out to shake it, and in a movement that is surprisingly quick for an unenhanced man pushing fifty, Tony slaps something metal to Narfi’s wrist.

It whirs gently as it unfolds, not unlike the Iron Man suit. Narfi watches in horror as the device engulfs his hand and wrist in a metal gauntlet. His distraction allows Natasha to grab his other arm and complete the set.

“What- what did you do?” Narfi cries, trying to pry the metal back to no avail.

“Magic suppressors. They worked well enough on your dear old dad last time we saw him, so I figured: goose. Gander. You know.”

Narfi glances fearfully at the CrowCam. It seems unaffected. Its human voice says “Narfi, stay calm. It’s going to be okay.”

Thunder growls threateningly overhead.

Thor has arrived.

-

“What’s with that face you made at the kid’s name?”

“Narfi is one of Loki’s children in Norse Mythology,” Steve answers. With Thor on the team, it paid to do a bit of research.

“Yeah? Is he the snake?” Tony is pretty sure there was a snake involved somewhere.

“No. He’s just an innocent kid. To punish Loki, Narfi’s brother is turned into a wolf and made to disembowel Narfi. Then the Asgardians use Narfi’s entrails to bind their father.”

“Jesus.”

“In other versions, Narfi was the wolf,” Natasha adds. Steve shifts in his seat, unable to get comfortable.

“It’s just a story.”

“Kid’s mom must have a grim sense of humor.”

-

Thor has a slightly different perspective than his teammates. On Asgard, one as old as Narfi would be an adult. Here, things are different. Here, Jane tells him, there are child labor laws, mandatory government-funded education, and a greater understanding of something called ‘developmental psychology’. Thor isn’t sure what to make of that, but he enjoys hearing of it from Jane nonetheless.

“Would you like a beer?” Thor asks the imprisoned adolescent.

“I’m not old enough to drink in America,” Narfi tells him. Thor gives him a long look.

“I am not of America. Would you like a beer?”

“Sure.” Thor takes a long swig of his own bottle, then hands Narfi another from the case. Narfi attempts several ways to hold the bottle around the magic suppressing bonds, but ultimately gives up. “Is it really necessary to completely divest me of my ability to hold things?” Narfi whines. Thor smiles. The youth looks and acts much like his brother did at that age, before jealousy and desperation overcame him.

“I will ask Tony if something can be done,” Thor offers. The youth smiles hesitantly in response. “Tell me of your bird. Is it Thought or Memory?”

“They’re Billy and Teddy, actually. This one’s Billy at the moment.” The CrowCam cocks its head and looks at Thor with gleaming glass eyes. Thor shakes his head. More references he doesn’t understand. Even immersed in human culture with Darcy at his side, he thinks it will take years for him to absorb enough.

“I didn’t realize any of my brother’s children had inherited his magic. Most of them don’t.” Thor hasn’t told the Avengers of the Aseir tendency to have children with humans when the mood strikes them. Sometime after the second reality TV show, Thor gathered that this sort of behavior is frowned upon on Midgard. 

“Thor.” The youth looks down at his bound hands.

“Yes, Nephew?” Thor asks. When that doesn’t get a response, he tries, “Niece?” because if Narfi inherited magic from Loki, there’s no telling what else the two have in common. That at least gets a smile from the youth.

“I’ve done something very bad,” she confesses. Thor considers this. How often after Loki’s fall from the Bifrost did he wish he had seen Loki’s breakdown coming? How often did he wish he had intervened before Loki’s bitterness turned to violence?

“Tell me, child,” Thor bids. He sits next to her and makes an effort to look open. Patience has been a skill hard-won.

“I thought I had to be Loki,” she begins. “I was made to be him. It’s a long story, one fit for skalds, br- Thor.” She chances a glance at Thor. He raises his eyebrows slightly, trying to urge Narfi to continue without committing to an emotional response.

“There was a child who used to wear this face,” she admits. She pauses again, waiting for Thor’s reaction. Thor has had a lifetime of experience listening to his brother’s stories, following his leaps from hints to conclusion. Still, this is not much to go on. A child who looked like Narfi, a creation meant to be Loki-?

“Go on,” Thor encourages. He rests a large, battle-calloused hand on his nibling’s shoulder. She leans into the touch.

“He was better than me. He _was_. Sometimes I pretend I’m really him. Other times- other times I wish we could switch places, and he could be here instead of me.” Narfi looks wistful, her face clear and yearning in a strikingly familiar expression that Thor hasn’t seen in years. Loki used to look like that, standing on the sidelines of the practice fields in Asgard.

“What happened to him?” Thor asks gently. Narfi’s face grows cold. Muscles tense under Thor’s hand.

“I killed him.” It’s a whisper, a secret that this strange youth is confiding. Thor looks sharply up at the ceiling and wonders if it was loud enough for JARVIS to hear. Thor throws a warning look at the walls just in case. To be so distraught at only one death- Thor thinks fondly of a time when he was so young: Before he became a warrior of Asgard, long before he ever saw the snow-covered cliffs of Jotunheim. This adolescent has had no need for war-time cynicism, and Thor hopes she has long years ahead of her before the need arises.

Thor has unlearned a lot since his banishment to Midgard: One death is enough; one death is too many.

“A deed that cannot be undone,” Thor comments, because it’s clear Narfi is looking for acknowledgement. “but you can yet make reparations. You are not the first to destroy and regret, Narfi. Not even the first in this tower.”

“He was your-“ Narfi hesitates, a strange act for one who speaks so much like Loki Silvertongue. “He was your kin.”

Thor knows now when a conversation is being led, although it was not always so.

“Every life matters,” Thor tells Narfi, because it is a lesson he wishes he had learned earlier. “Aesir, human, or Jotnar. Family, ally, or foe. The child you speak of didn’t deserve to die, and neither do you.”

Narfi is silent. Thor squeezes her shoulder gently, then moves to stand.

“Think on it,” he asks, “I will ask Tony if something can be done about your bonds.” He addresses the ceiling, as he has seen the others do when addressing Tony’s creation. “JARVIS, watch over my niece while I am away.”

The youth snorts in amusement as the electronic door shuts behind Thor.

The CrowCam hops forward and tilts its head at Narfi.

“What are _you_ looking at?” she asks.

-

“There’s no record of Narfi Lokison living in New York,” Natasha reports when Thor joins them.

“Not that we really expected there to be,” Steve qualifies, “We don’t use patronymic surnames anymore, so he probably has a different last name if he’s in the system at all.”

Tony swipes at his holographic display and makes a humming noise at whatever he sees. Only then does he acknowledge Thor’s presence.

“So! Any hints on what Junior is planning?”

“Her restraints are needlessly restrictive and she requests that they be loosened,” Thor says. His tone is thoughtful, because while he wants his nibbling to be more comfortable, he also knows that trickery could lie beneath Narfi’s innocuous exterior. Asking to be released is the most obvious ploy, but also a reasonable request.

“Her-?” Steve asks. Thor shrugs. Narfi seemed to respond well to being addressed as his niece.

He hasn’t ever really put into words this tendency of Loki’s. When they were children everyone ignored it, and as adults people either went along Loki’s gender in respect to the house of Odin or kept it to themselves. No one in Asgard would do something so crass as to ask the crown prince why his brother was suddenly a woman.

“Loki was sometimes my brother, other times my sister. It seems that Narfi takes after him in more than just magic.”

“Ah, genderfluid, ok,” Tony taps at his holographic screen as if making a note. “Otherwise, is there any possible universe in which relaxing her restraints is a good idea?”

“You already gave her access to her own weapon, why not go all out?” Natasha asks, crossing her arms.

“It’s a camera! If we keep it anywhere but with the kid, it gathers even more information we don’t want her to have,” Tony says, clearly annoyed. Natasha gives him a bored look, but Tony won’t even meet her eyes, preferring to devote his attention to the screen.

“They’ve been like this since you left,” Steve tells Thor.

“Tony, my request-?”

“Convince me.” Months of working together reveal the message hidden underneath: ‘I don’t like this, give me an excuse to stop.’ Detaining a young adult for her father’s misdeeds hit Tony hard, but not hard enough to override his cynicism.

“Even Loki wasn’t physically restrained.” The four Avengers look at each other. Left unsaid is: _and look how that turned out._

Steve must have his idealism hat on today, because he says, without irony, “If we don’t give her the opportunity to be trusted, she’ll never be trustworthy.”

“I think we’re all hoping she’ll turn out different then her father.”

Tony swipes angrily at the screen, scrambling the holographic windows for a moment. They immediately rearrange themselves. “So we’re buying the ‘Loki’s illegitimate child’ schtick?”

Thor shakes his head. “There is more to the story than Narfi has told us, but I do believe she is a product of Loki.”

“Ok, besides slight of hand, is there anything else Narfi could do if you freed her hands?” Steve asks. “Her magic would still be blocked, right?”

“Should be. The current running through those babies scrambles any foreign energy field generated by her person. ”

“Thor?” Natasha asks, her gaze seeming to penetrate beneath Thor’s veneer of neutrality to the kernel of hope hidden underneath.

“If it were my brother who was imprisoned here, I would say that his tongue was more a weapon than his hands, and you have left that unbound.”

-

Narfi pretends to be uninterested in the mechanics of the magic-dampening gauntlets, but the way she stares as Tony carefully disassembles them tells a different story. The trick is to remove as much of the casing as possible while leaving the electronic innards intact. Tony designed them to be confining, and that purpose is not easily neutered.

Tony is a perfectionist when it comes to engineering, and it wounds him to have to declare himself done when the end product looks so unfinished. There are no raw edges or exposed wires (that’s just messy), but the bare panels and hastily covered circuits have none of the flair of his other creations. Still, the kid can use her hands now, and he didn’t even have to compromise the basic purpose of the dampeners.

That’ll have to be enough.

Tony claps his hands, and is gratified to see the kid jump at the sudden sound.

“All done,” he announces. Narfi smiles at him, a wide toothy grin entirely unlike the wry smirks she’s been flinging around left and right.

“Thank you, Tony Stark,” Narfi says.

“Yeah, yeah. I did something for you, now it’s your turn to do something for me.” Some of the enthusiasm drains out of the kid’s smile.

“What do you want?”

“Earlier, when we were upstairs, you just about shit yourself when you saw Black Widow. What was with that?” The kid’s odd reaction is the reason Natasha and Steve are watching this conversation on a viewscreen several floors above instead of being in the room with Tony and Thor.

The kid’s smile drops completely. She idly scratches one arm and gains a pinched expression. She looks every bit like an awkward teenager.

“Miss Romanova is a very attractive woman,” she says slowly, not making eye contact with Tony or Thor. It’s a very convincing lie. Tony might actually believe it if he didn’t see the exchange happen himself.

“Cut the crap. That wasn’t an awkward horny teenager reaction I saw up there. You were bowel-clenching terrified, and I want to know why.”

Narfi is silent. She clenches her jaw and stares Tony in the eyes.

“Ok, we can play it your way. JARVIS can make a localized version of your dampening cuffs right here in this room. It’s complicated and I’m not sure he could sustain it for long, but I’m betting your little toy wouldn’t like that much.” Tony glances meaningfully at the CrowCam. Narfi’s eyes widen. She doesn’t just glare daggers at Tony- she glares broadswords. Narfi then looks past him at Thor, but finds no sympathy there.

She licks her lips and beings to speak.

“The Black Widow is an assassin. She’s not a superhero. She murders people in cold blood because someone tells her to. Of course I’m afraid of her. Aren’t you?”

Tony considers this answer. “Yeah, ok. I’ll buy that.” _For now_. “JARVIS, keep an eye on the kid for a minute, would you?” He turns to leave. Thor hesitates in the doorway.

“The Black Widow chooses every day to be a hero,” Thor tells his nibling. “Whatever else my brother was, he was my family. And thus, so are you.”

Narfi is left alone in the holding cell, with only the CrowCam and JARVIS for company.

“I’m ready for America,” she says to the still air.

-

“She’s afraid of me because I’m a spy?” Natasha repeats, incredulous. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“SHIELD’s file on you was one of the things we leaked to the public, she could have found it online,” Steve argues for the sake of fairness.

“Nah, I’m with Natasha. The girl’s lying, but she was just going to make up something else if I called her on it. I think we need to address that Loki’s kid just tried the same trick Loki pulled on the Helicarrier.”

“Narfi’s fear was genuine.”

“Maybe, but trying to convince us that one of our own is a monster was totally a ploy.”

Thor is silent. If his friends haven’t heard his earlier conversation with Narfi, he will not betray the girl’s trust now. To be fair, it was Thor who first brought up the bloody past of the Avengers.

“So we don’t fall for it. We’re not divided. What’s Narfi’s next move?” Natasha asks the room.

“We left her alone with her camera and her hands free,” Steve realizes.

The team runs down to the holding cells faster than any humans have a right to move.

They’re too late, of course.

JARVIS didn’t even have time to sound the alarm.

She’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Michael Buffer saying [“Let’s get ready to rumble!”](%E2%80%9D)
> 
> The Avengers first assume Loki/Narfi is a boy because of the shape of zir body. Later, Thor assumes Narfi is in girl-mode because of how ze reacted to being called Thor’s niece (Thor is unfamiliar with nonbinary gender systems, and thus doesn’t know to ask).  
> [Nibling](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nibling) is the gender-neutral form of niece or nephew. The narrative uses this for Loki, but again, Thor is not familiar with this word, and thus he uses the gendered alternatives instead.
> 
> [Arthur C. Clarke](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws) wrote that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Tony is challenging the idea that anything is really “magic”. He thinks that he could take apart a CrowCam and define its functioning in terms of physics and engineering. He’s wrong.  
> [Narfi (or Nari)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narfi_and_Nari) is one of the Aesir sons of Loki in Norse Mythology. Billy, being a Norse nerd, would be familiar with the story. 
> 
> Loki froze when ze saw Natasha because ze was remembering being killed by her. In the previous story [Be Careful Making Wishes in the Dark](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2230929), Loki encounters MCU! Natasha in a time loop, and is killed immediately when ze introduced zirself as Loki. Time reset, which is why Loki is alive and Natasha doesn’t remember meeting this version, but Loki still remembers.  
> Billy is aware of this, which is why he provided Loki with a pseudonym to use while visiting the MCU. No need to provoke the Black Widow.
> 
> Loki’s aged-up body looks somewhere between late-teens and early 20s. Tony and Thor are the main POV characters in this chapter and they consider people in this age group to be “kids” or “children”, which is why Loki/Narfi is described that way in the narration. Basically they’re OLD and look at ~21 year old Loki and think “you are SO YOUNG”. Compare to the Hawkeye comics when Clint says “this is Kate. She’s like 9 years old and spoiled rotten”. Kate is around 20. Oh, Clint.
> 
> Feel free to write up a comment if you’ve gotten this far- otherwise I don’t know what’s working and what isn’t in these fics.


End file.
